Although "the Socratic method" is commonly understood as a style of pedagogy involving cross-questioning between teacher and student, there has long been debate among scholars of ancient philosophy about how this method as attributed to Socrates should be defined or, indeed, whether Socrates can be said to have used any single, uniform method at all distinctive to his way of philosophizing. This volume brings together essays by classicists and philosophers examining this controversy anew. The point of departure for many of (...) those engaged in the debate has been the identification of Socratic method with "the elenchus" as a technique of logical argumentation aimed at refuting an interlocutor, which Gregory Vlastos highlighted in an influential article in 1983. The essays in this volume look again at many of the issues to which Vlastos drew attention but also seek to broaden the discussion well beyond the limits of his formulation. Some contributors question the suitability of the elenchus as a general description of how Socrates engages his interlocutors; others trace the historical origins of the kinds of argumentation Socrates employs; others explore methods in addition to the elenchus that Socrates uses; several propose new ways of thinking about Socratic practices. Eight essays focus on specific dialogues, each examining why Plato has Socrates use the particular methods he does in the context defined by the dialogue. Overall, representing a wide range of approaches in Platonic scholarship, the volume aims to enliven and reorient the debate over Socratic method so as to set a new agenda for future research. Contributors are Hayden W. Ausland, Hugh H. Benson, Thomas C. Brickhouse, Michelle Carpenter, John M. Carvalho, Lloyd P. Gerson, Francisco J. Gonzalez, James H. Lesher, Mark McPherran, Ronald M. Polansky, Gerald A. Press, François Renaud, and W. Thomas Schmid, Nicholas D. Smith, P. Christopher Smith, Harold Tarrant, Joanne B. Waugh, and Charles M. Young. (shrink)

Although "the Socratic method" is commonly understood as a style of pedagogy involving cross-questioning between teacher and student, there has long been debate among scholars of ancient philosophy about how this method as attributed to Socrates should be defined or, indeed, whether Socrates can be said to have used any single, uniform method at all distinctive to his way of philosophizing. This volume brings together essays by classicists and philosophers examining this controversy anew. The point of departure for many of (...) those engaged in the debate has been the identification of Socratic method with "the elenchus" as a technique of logical argumentation aimed at refuting an interlocutor, which Gregory Vlastos highlighted in an influential article in 1983. The essays in this volume look again at many of the issues to which Vlastos drew attention but also seek to broaden the discussion well beyond the limits of his formulation. Some contributors question the suitability of the elenchus as a general description of how Socrates engages his interlocutors; others trace the historical origins of the kinds of argumentation Socrates employs; others explore methods in addition to the elenchus that Socrates uses; several propose new ways of thinking about Socratic practices. Eight essays focus on specific dialogues, each examining why Plato has Socrates use the particular methods he does in the context defined by the dialogue. Overall, representing a wide range of approaches in Platonic scholarship, the volume aims to enliven and reorient the debate over Socratic method so as to set a new agenda for future research. Contributors are Hayden W. Ausland, Hugh H. Benson, Thomas C. Brickhouse, Michelle Carpenter, John M. Carvalho, Lloyd P. Gerson, Francisco J. Gonzalez, James H. Lesher, Mark McPherran, Ronald M. Polansky, Gerald A. Press, François Renaud, and W. Thomas Schmid, Nicholas D. Smith, P. Christopher Smith, Harold Tarrant, Joanne B. Waugh, and Charles M. Young. (shrink)

[John Hawthorne] We examine some well-known disjunctivist projects in the philosophy of perception, mainly in a critical vein. Our discussion is divided into four parts. Following some introductory remarks, we examine in part two the link between object-dependent contents and disjunctivism. In part three, we explore the disjunctivist's use of discriminability facts as a basis for understanding experience. In part four, we examine an interesting argument for disjunctivism that has been offered by Michael Martin. /// [Scott Sturgeon] The (...) paper aims to do five things: sketch the backbone of disjunctivism about visual experience, explore the view of our title, defend a version of that view from two objections, press two more objections of my own, and sketch a more radical variety of disjunctivism which avoids much of the bother. (shrink)

The public accounting industry's voluntary code of conduct in the United States is the American Institute of CPA's Code of Professional Conduct. Based on our analysis, we conclude that the accounting industry's current code is limited in its ability to serve the public interest in three respects. Specifically, the code is input-based, requires no third-party attestation of compliance with the code, and contains no public reporting process of code compliance/noncompliance at the accounting firm level. We propose that the accounting profession (...) should reorient its largely input-based Code of Professional Conduct to include output-based performance measurements. We also conclude that third-party attestation of compliance with the profession's code would help to promote compliance. Finally, we maintain that the accounting industry should initiate a public reporting process at the individual accounting firm level. Such a requirement would add a degree of public accountability as to whether a firm complies or fails to comply with the industry's voluntary code of conduct. (shrink)

A broad assumption in argumentation theory is that argumentation primarily regards resolving, confronting, or managing disagreement. This assumption is so fundamental that even when there does not appear to be any real disagreement, the disagreement is suggested to be present at some other level. Some have questioned this assumption (most prominently, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, and Doury), but most are reluctant to give up on the key idea that persuasion, the core of argumentation theory, can only regard disagreements. We argue here (...) that this assumption is false. Argument may be as much about strengthening or maintaining agreement as it is about disagreement. Once we see how argument is possible and manifestly enacted under conditions of agreement, then we have tools to explain otherwise curious fallacies and argumentative phenomena. (shrink)

The third collection in this series includes the same combination of scarce and not so well-known texts as well as more important and popular works.

This article presents a theorized and conceptually informed method for the undertaking of an ethics audit organization. At an operational level, the overall integrity of an organization, it is argued, may be evaluated through the application of a conceptual frame-work that embraces the inter-related themes of individual responsibility, social equity and political responsibility. Finally, a method is presented for ethics audit which was developed in the auditing of a national public sector sports organization: sportscotland. This emphasizes the significance of key (...) personnel (individuals and in groups) in producing and reproducing the organizational ethos, whilst recognizing the importance of anonymity and confidentiality throughout the process. The theoretical terrain of the ethics audit is articulated through a consideration of ethics as applied moral philosophy, equity as social justice and corporate governance as the moral health (or otherwise) of a public sector sports organization. (shrink)

The dominant unspoken philosophical basis of medical care in the United States is a form of Cartesian reductionism that views the body as a machine and medical professionals as technicians whose job is to repair that machine. The purpose of this paper is to advocate for an alternative philosophy of medicine based on the concept of healing relationships between clinicians and patients. This is accomplished first by exploring the ethical and philosophical work of Pellegrino and Thomasma and then by connecting (...) Martin Buber's philosophical work on the nature of relationships to an empirically derived model of the medical healing relationship. The Healing Relationship Model was developed by the authors through qualitative analysis of interviews of physicians and patients. Clinician-patient healing relationships are a special form of what Buber calls I-Thou relationships, characterized by dialog and mutuality, but a mutuality limited by the inherent asymmetry of the clinician-patient relationship. The Healing Relationship Model identifies three processes necessary for such relationships to develop and be sustained: Valuing, Appreciating Power and Abiding. We explore in detail how these processes, as well as other components of the model resonate with Buber's concepts of I-Thou and I-It relationships. The resulting combined conceptual model illuminates the wholeness underlying the dual roles of clinicians as healers and providers of technical biomedicine. On the basis of our analysis, we argue that health care should be focused on healing, with I-Thou relationships at its core. (shrink)

Managers in Peru, South Africa, and the United States were classified into four groups along Singhapakdi et al. (J Bus Ethics 15:1131–1140, 1996) Perceived Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility (PRESOR) scale. In Peru and the United States, individuals in the ethics and social responsibility first category reported greater satisfaction with organizational performance than did those in the profits first category. Moral capitalists—individuals who report high emphases on both social responsibility and profits—reported the highest satisfaction with performance in the United (...) States. Managers in the United States are more likely than their counterparts in Peru and South Africa to reject the mutual exclusivity of prioritizing social responsibility and profits simultaneously. Directions for future research are outlined. (shrink)

William of Ockham is known to be one of the major figures of the late Middle Ages. The scope and significance of his doctrine of human thought, however, has been a controversial issue among scholars in the last decade, and this book presents a full discussion of recent developments. Claude Panaccio proposes a richly documented and entirely original reinterpretation of Ockham's theory of concepts as a coherent blend of representationalism, conceptual atomism, and non reductionist nominalism, stressing in the process its (...) special interest for current discussions in philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences. (shrink)

Canada has followed the pattern of Benelux nations by legislating sufferingSuffering as the pivotal eligibilityEligibilitycriterionCriterion for euthanasiaEuthanasia/assisted death without requiring terminal prognosis as is needed in most permissive jurisdictions. This chapter will explore the relationship between sufferingSuffering and Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) and the ways in which sufferingSuffering is understood in the Supreme Court of Canada, the federal Criminal Code legislation and by health care assessors. Based on this analysis, we will argue that the resulting sufferingSufferingeligibilityEligibilitycriterionCriterion leaves the law (...) open to unintended forms of interpretation, thus instituting perhaps the most unbounded and risk-prone form of assisted death in the world. A review of the literature on sufferingSuffering, the wish to dieWish to die, and reasons for MAIDReasons for MAID requests found sufferingSuffering of severe illness to be frequently associated with unstable mental health, social, and existentialExistential variables that are often amenable to therapy or remediation. While sufferingSuffering remains a powerful motivating force to seek opportunities to relieve distress, its use as an eligibilityEligibilitycriterionCriterion for MAID has significant ambiguity in its’ characterization of ‘enduring’ and ‘irremediable’ and thus fails to protect against abuse for the vulnerable. (shrink)

Carey's book on conceptual change and the accompanying argument that children's biology initially is organized in terms of naïve psychology has sparked a great detail of research and debate. This body of research on children's biology has, however, been almost exclusively been based on urban, majority culture children in the US or in other industrialized nations. The development of folkbiological knowledge may depend on cultural and experiential background. If this is the case, then urban majority culture children may prove to (...) be the exception rather than the rule, because plants and animals do not play a significant role in their everyday life. Urban majority culture children, rural majority culture children, and rural Native American children were given a property projection task based on Carey's original paradigm. Each group produced a unique profile of development. Only urban children showed evidence for early anthropocentrism, suggesting that the co-mingling of psychology and biology may be a product of an impoverished experience with nature. In comparison to urban majority culture children even the youngest rural children generalized in terms of biological affinity. In addition, all ages of Native American children and the older rural majority culture children gave clear evidence of ecological reasoning. These results show that both culture and expertise play a role in the development of folkbiological thought. (shrink)

The chapter explores the sufferingSufferingassociated with MAIDMedical Assistance in Dying (MAID) giving special attention to assessmentAssessment and the psychological responses elicited in caregivers highlighting the need for all MAIDMedical Assistance in Dying (MAID) enquiries to activate a period of intense assessmentAssessment and the provision of detailed treatment alternatives. This chapter calls for a renewed commitment to compassionCompassion (‘sufferingSuffering together with’) as the communal dynamic to relieve and assuage such sufferingSuffering. Using the four domains of ‘total pain’ (Saunders in The management (...) of terminal malignant disease. Edward Arnold, London, UK, 1978), we summarize the evidence for the multiple opportunities available to ‘relieve often and comfort always.’ Finally, we review evidence on the impactImpactof MAIDMedical Assistance in Dying (MAID) suggesting that the overall burden of sufferingSuffering in Canada has increased since legalization. (shrink)

Ayn Rand's first novel, We the Living, offers an early form of the author's nascent philosophy—the philosophy Rand later called Objectivism. Robert Mayhew's collection of entirely new essays brings together pre-eminent scholars of Rand's writing. In part a history of We the Living, from its earliest drafts to the Italian film later based upon it, Mayhew's collection goes on to explore the enduring significance of Rand's first novel as a work both of philosophy and of literature.

This book analyses the straw man fallacy and its deployment in philosophical reasoning. While commonly invoked in both academic dialogue and public discourse, it has not until now received the attention it deserves as a rhetorical device. Scott Aikin and John Casey propose that straw manning essentially consists in expressing distorted representations of one's critical interlocutor. To this end, the straw man comprises three dialectical forms, and not only the one that is usually suggested: the straw man, the (...) weak man and the hollow man. Moreover, they demonstrate that straw manning is unique among fallacies as it has no particular logical form in itself, because it is an instance of inappropriate meta-argument, or argument about arguments. They discuss the importance of the onlooking audience to the successful deployment of the straw man, reasoning that the existence of an audience complicates the dialectical boundaries of argument. Providing a lively, provocative and thorough analysis of the straw man fallacy, this book will appeal to postgraduates and researchers alike, working in a range of fields including fallacies, rhetoric, argumentation theory and informal logic. (shrink)

Free speech fallacies are errors of meta-argument. One commits a free speech fallacy when one argues that since there are apparent restrictions on one’s rights of free expression, procedural rules of critical exchange have been broken, and consequently, one’s preferred view is dialectically better off than it may otherwise seem. Free speech fallacies are meta-argumentative, since they occur at the level of assessing the dialectical situation in terms of norms of argument and in terms of meta-evidential principles of interpreting how (...) and why people follow (or fail to follow) argumentative rules. Our plan here is to begin with a brief explanation of meta-argument and meta-argumentative fallacy. We will then turn to the variety of forms of the free speech fallacy, which we will explain as meta-argumentatively erroneous. (shrink)

Arguments are weakly meta-argumentative when they call attention to themselves and purport to be successful as arguments. Arguments are strongly metaargumentative when they take arguments (themselves or other arguments) as objects for evaluation, clarification, or improvement and explicitly use concepts of argument analysis for the task. The ambitious meta-argumentation thesis is that all argumentation is weakly argumentative. The modest meta-argumentation thesis is that there are unique instances of strongly meta-argumentative argument. Here, we show how the two theses are connected and (...) both are plausible. (shrink)

The straw man fallacy consists in inappropriately constructing or selecting weak versions of the opposition's arguments. We will survey the three forms of straw men recognized in the literature, the straw, weak, and hollow man. We will then make the case that there are examples of inappropriately reconstructing stronger versions of the opposition's arguments. Such cases we will call iron man fallacies.

This article presents the results of a study that investigated the roles that one's money ethic, religiosity and attitude toward business play in determining consumer attitudes/beliefs in various situations regarding questionable consumer practices. Two dimensions of religiosity - intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness - were studied. A global scale of money ethic was examined, as was a global measure of attitude toward business. Results indicate that both types of religiosity as well as one's money ethic and attitude toward business were significant (...) determinants of at least some types of consumer ethical beliefs. (shrink)

Renegotiations of identities in a 21st century world and a resurgence of older loyalties are calling into question our shared sense of belonging and place. This results in the predicament of how and where to feel at home.

Despite 250 years of work in systematics, the majority of species remains to be identified. Rising extinction rates and the need for increased biological monitoring lend urgency to this task. DNA sequencing, with key sequences serving as a “barcode”, has therefore been proposed as a technology that might expedite species identification. In particular, the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 gene has been employed as a possible DNA marker for species and a number of studies in a variety of taxa (...) have accordingly been carried out to examine its efficacy. In general, these studies demonstrate that DNA barcoding resolves most species, although some taxa have proved intractable. In some studies, barcoding provided a means of highlighting potential cryptic, synonymous or extinct species as well as matching adults with immature specimens. Higher taxa, however, have not been resolved as accurately as species. Nonetheless, DNA barcoding appears to offer a means of identifying species and may become a standard tool. BioEssays 29: 188–197, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This book raises many moral, legal, social, and political, questions related to possible development, in the near future, of an artificial womb for human use. Is ectogenesis ever morally permissible? If so, under what circumstances? Will ectogenesis enhance or diminish women's reproductive rights and/or their economic opportunities? These are some of the difficult and crucial questions this anthology addresses and attempts to answer.

The public accounting industry’s voluntary code of conduct in the United States is the American Institute of CPA’s Code of Professional Conduct. Based on our analysis, we conclude that the accounting industry’s current code is limited in its ability to serve the public interest in three respects. Specifically, the code is input-based, requires no third-party attestation of compliance with the code, and contains no public reporting process of code compliance/noncompliance at the accounting firm level. We propose that the accounting profession (...) should reorient its largely input-based Code of Professional Conduct to include output-based performance measurements. We also conclude that third-party attestation of compliance with the profession’s code would help to promote compliance. Finally, we maintain that the accounting industry should initiate a public reporting process at the individual accounting firm level. Such a requirement would add a degree of public accountability as to whether a firm complies or fails to comply with the industry’s voluntary code of conduct. (shrink)

In this international and interdisciplinary collection of critical essays, distinguished contributors examine a crucial premise of traditional readings of Plato's dialogues: that Plato's own doctrines and arguments can be read off the statements made in the dialogues by Socrates and other leading characters. The authors argue in general and with reference to specific dialogues, that no character should be taken to be Plato's mouthpiece. This is essential reading for students and scholars of Plato.

Since the origins of the notion of emergence in attempts to recover the content of vitalistic anti-reductionism without its questionable metaphysics, emergence has been treated in terms of logical properties. This approach was doomed to failure, because logical properties are either sui generis or they are constructions from other logical properties. If the former, they do not explain on their own and are inevitably somewhat arbitrary (the problem with the related concept of supervenience, Collier, 1988a), but if the latter, reducibility (...) is assured because logical constructs are reducible, by definition, to their logical components. A satisfactory account of emergence must recognise that it is a dynamical, not a logical property of property of natural systems, and that its basis is dynamical rather than logical composition. Collier (1988a) introduced the concept of cohesion as the closure of the causal relations among the dynamical parts of a dynamical particular that determine its resistance to external and internal fluctuations that might disrupt its integrity. Cohesion is an equivalence relation that partitions a set of dynamical particulars into unified and distinct entities, providing the identity conditions for such particulars. Cohesion blocks reduction of dynamical particulars, and is necessary for dynamical emergence. We will give reasons for thinking that cohesion might be sufficient for emergence as well. (shrink)

The ethics literature has identified moral motivation as a factor in ethical decision-making. Furthermore, moral identity has been identified as a source of moral motivation. In the current study, we examine religiosity as an antecedent to moral identity and examine the mediating role of self-control in this relationship. We find that intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions of religiosity have different direct and indirect effects on the internalization and symbolization dimensions of moral identity. Specifically, intrinsic religiosity plays a role in counterbalancing the (...) negative impact of extrinsic religiosity on the internalization of moral identity. Further, intrinsic religiosity also counterbalances the negative and indirect impact of extrinsic religiosity on symbolization of moral identity via self-control. Lastly, self-control does not play a mediating role in the impact of religiosity on the internalization dimension of moral identity. We conclude that this study presents important findings that advance our understanding of the antecedents of moral identity, and that these results may have implications for the understanding of ethical decision-making. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of a fallacy we will call bothsiderism, which is to mistake disagreement on an issue for evidence that either a compromise on, suspension of judgment regarding, or continued discussion of the issue is in order. Our view is that this is a fallacy of a unique and heretofore untheorized type, a fallacy of meta-argumentation. The paper develops as follows. After a brief introduction, we examine a recent bothsiderist case in American politics. We use this as (...) a pivot point to survey the theoretical literature on the fallacy. The most prominent theory is that bothsiderism is a case of dialogue-shifting. This view fails, we maintain, to explain how bothsiderism might be persuasive. We argue, rather, bothsiderism is a kind of meta-argumentative fallacy. (shrink)

Given increasing ethical problems in business, many organizations have tried to control these problems by institutionalizing ethics such as by creating new ethics positions and formulating and enforcing codes of ethics. In this study, the impact of implicit and explicit forms of institutionalization of ethics on job satisfaction, esprit de corps, and organizational commitment for marketing professionals is investigated. Additionally, the influence of organizational socialization, ethical relativism, and age relative to each of the above organizational climate constructs is examined. Results (...) indicate that at least one of the forms of institutionalization of ethics is a significant determinant of all three organizational climate constructs. However, while organizational socialization is a significant determinant of all three organizational climate variables, relativism is only significant in determining organizational commitment (in a negative direction) and age is only significant in determining job satisfaction. (shrink)